Be Who We Are

The Invitation with Adhikari

Samyama - The Art of Direct Experience and Living Meditation

Samyama is essentially directly experiencing everything without putting a label or story on it.* It is to see things as they truly are, not what we think they are. Most of the time we do not directly experience people, nature, ourselves, etc. as they truly are; we experience our stories about them. We are not being in the moment aware of all in and around us. Samyama is really living meditation, mindfulness moment to moment.

In individual sessions, classes or workshops, Adhikari helps people learn how to directly experience everything. One can bring attention to one's breath or to one's heart center and experience everything from there. Or one can just focus on the feeling, person, tree, etc without putting any concept or qualification on it. It is silently being with everything as it is, not projecting anything on it.

An amazing thing happens when you don't name what you are looking at, e.g. you don't say "tree' as the object you are looking at. Then all sense of "me" as subject looking at the object disappears and there is just indivisible emptiness, unknowable totality...really beyond all words! There is the joy of realizing there is no distinction between subject and object....all sense of duality comes from our thinking!

Besides being the most excellent way to live, samyama has proven to be a powerful way to heal. All pain, anger, sadness, when directly experienced without story, especially in the heart center, just dissolves. Even not labeling the feeling is important, just being with the sensations or feel of something before putting a thought on it. Because once you put a thought on it, you are past the direct experience of it and it doesn't dissolve. It is only our stories about what happens to us that creates the suffering.

Adhikari offers individual samyama sessions in person or by phone. And sometimes workshops if there is a desire. She often offers samyama as part of the Yoga Teaching Training Program of Baltimore Yoga Village. Contact http://www.baltimoreyogavillage.com/ to find out more.

*Samyama is a term that comes from the Patanjali Yoga Sutras meaning Divine Realization. It was adapted by Sheila Foster to healing http://www.temenoscenter.org/